Service Starts!

Went to my site Saturday after swearing in! The ceremony was a lot of fun although sad at the same time.  On one hand, we were there celebrating all of our accomplishments and the face that we are now going off to do what we had all signed up for, but on the other, we are passed along to our sites without the safety net that is the training staff and schedule.  The “poco a poco” style has abruptly changed into a system with little oversight or set schedule.  We only have ourselves to get out of the house, meet new people and find activities to keep us sane and engaged.  The next 2 months are the school break, and it seems the PC wants to ensure a higher level of Spanish comprehension before classes begin in order to ensure quality education.  However, this gap has been described to us as the worst part of service, as little set schedule and little “confianza” with the townspeople can lead to isolation. 

A word about confianza: the people here highly value their social and familiar ties, sometimes to the point that Americans scratch their head at why some things take so long to accomplish.  However, these relationships are the backbone to a society with little social safety net, and where the inhibitive cost of moving keeps many near their place of birth for their entire lives.  Cultivation of trust, or “confianza” in others, and avoidance of conflict is the preferred method of living life.  People can often times find circuitous ways to say what they really mean, like the time my host family told me they were going to dinner at a restaurant and I only found out that I was invited after I finished a shower while they waited for me to leave with them.  To build confianza, you must play this game too.  It is best to start relationships perhaps only casually mentioning what you will be doing instead for two years instead of asking for space in their backyard for a garden.  Direct questions are sometimes deemed as awkward or downright rude.  Time in the community talking with people is necessary to integrate. 

The week seemed full of lectures of material we have either been taught many times and is only being reinforced, or of new information that we could not have a chance to process.  Visiting the Embassy was interesting, seeing a little bit of the States in Central America.  The structure itself is a remarkable illustration of power; the land had been owned for about 100 years by the US, and the top of a hill overlooking Managua used to be the Ambassador’s private residence.  After the earthquake, the Embassy (downtown, I think) was destroyed, and a temporary structure was erected on the property of the Ambassador’s house.   The temporary Embassy lasted some 35 years, until in the mid 2000’s, the new building was completed.  Complete with Marine guards and bomb-resistant doors, the structure is impressive and a bit intimidating.  We were given a final security briefing and an opportunity to talk to the temporary Ambassador (the new one has not been fully vetted and confirmed by congress).  At lunch in the Embassy, we went into a tiny gift shop, which among other things has bottles of Tommy Knocker Ale direct from Idaho Springs, Colorado! 

Right now I am in sitting in my family’s house on my computer while they are all at work or school.  I live with a young couple with a 10 year old son and 8 year old daughter.  They are a devout evangelical family and are interested in sharing their belief and asking about mine.  The house itself was built by my host dad, Octavio, when he married Mirna, my mom.  Then, as their family grew, he added a front area for TV and socializing, and a back room which has a small kitchen and a room for housing a gringo.  It feels cozy and connected to their family and church friends, and there are almost always children coming and going from the house.  Yesterday I felt a bit like a baby sitter as my mom left and told me she would be back after making cheese at her sister’s house.  There were 6 little ones, and a high schooler playing out front until it started raining, and we had to bring all that energy into the house.  I think this will be a nice place to live for 2 months, as I felt that my old family was nice, but were a little preoccupied with raising a 3 and 1 year old to devote their full energy to me.  Also, there was no TV in a public spot at my old house, so there was never an opportunity to veg out while still hearing the language presented to you.

Today, I am meeting with my site-mate, a maternal health volunteer who has been here for 6 months.  She is going to take me around to some NGO’s and show me around her world a little bit, and I agreed to carry a new gas tank for her stove up her 1 km hill out of town.  A fair trade, if I do say so myself!  I tried creating a rough schedule to fill the first week, and will hopefully have more going on after talking to the other NGO’s in the weeks to come.  Other than that, I am looking forward to being here, and I am sure my schedule will look a lot different when the kids are out of school in a week. 

Almost a volunteer!

The countdown for leaving my host town is 3 days.  The last 3 months have passed by quickly, and after the Peace Corps’ “poco a poco” method of training and integration, we will soon be thrown to the lions, and fully immersed into a new community with little further guidance.  From having the PC schedule and monitor your every move to this freedom will be difficult.  Our first 2 months on site are during summer recess,  and there will not be much structure unless we seek it from existing institutions or create it ourselves in communities where perhaps outsiders are not immediately trusted.  For example, one suggestion is to start a summer camp of some sort.  Their suggestion was to have as much as possible figured out before asking for help, so as to have the mistrust of a stranger mitigated with a concrete set of goals and expectations from each other.  I also have NGOs in my area and will try to add myself to their plans.

Next week we will spend most of our time in Managua where we will meet with the Embassy, have some last minute presentations about safety, hear about potential cross sector projects (with agriculture, teaching English, or Health), and what the Peace Corps expects from us, and what to expect from them in the next 2 years.  Then, we stay in a hotel for 2 nights.  We swear in as volunteers on Friday in the morning and then have “thanksgiving dinner” at the country director’s house.  Then, on Saturday, it is off to our sites, and our new lives as bonified Peace Corps Volunteers!

It is exciting, scary, and fun to think that for the next two years I will be immersed in a community and have responsibilities to the Peace Corps.  Their approach is very hands-off, for the most part.  If they hear of problems at school or that you are not living up to your expectations, then there are negative ramifications, but other than that there are not direct oversight from the PC.  We are to fill out a report every 3 months of our experiences and projects, and we are supposed to collaborate with our local teachers and have them sign off on the work we are doing.  Other than that, we are free to find actionable problems and see how we can help the community resolve them in creative and sustainable ways, generally utilizing only the resources found in that community.  There are opportunities to seek grants and that type of thing, but I feel as though I will really need to understand the community’s needs before going about that process. 

I am excited about my site.  Located in Matagalpa, up north, it is a hilly farming community of about 6 thousand people and growing.  I will be assigned to local schools where I will sit in on classes and start teaching when the new school year begins in January.  I have only visited the site for 3 days, but from the looks of it, there are many options for interesting side projects outside of school.  NGOs in the area are building latrines, helping outlying communities with access to electricity and water, and planning projects to introduce efficient ovens into the communities to make cooking less wasteful and less smoky.    Generally, it seems that my options are wide open, and if I can help some of these groups or start generating interest in my own projects, my service will bear fruit. 

The last months have been filled with Spanish lessons and technical training for classroom teaching, gardening, and cultural knowledge.  About half my peers were or had been teachers in the US, so I had a large pool of knowledge while learning about the particularities of Nicaraguan learning.  The Peace Corps incorporates the realities of Nicaraguan classrooms to the dynamic types of activities found in most US schools.  Here, the basic lessons are in government issued books meant to be distributed to the children, but in most schools there are too few books to students, and instead of sharing the limited resources, the teacher generally writes down the relevant definitions on the board, which the students are expected to copy and be able to recite for tests essentially verbatim.  Our goal is to promote more dynamic and interdisciplinary learning methods into the classes, so the children develop more sophisticated ways of seeing subject matter or tasks. 

We have also had the opportunity to take some day trips to nearby cities and points of interest.  There is an ancient volcano with a large crater and a lagoon about 5 miles from my house.  About a half mile hike down a steep trail leads to the water’s edge, where we were lead by the host brother of another trainee a few months ago.  At the bottom are some houses, a hostel and farms, and the lagoon is slowly developing into a tourist destination.  It is quite pretty, and is a spot with many endemic species of cichlids, and there are howler monkeys in the surrounding forest.  This is one of a handful of bodies of water in this area of dense population that is clean enough to swim in, the other is Lake Nicaragua which is about 7% of the total country and is slowly getting more polluted as Lake Managua spills into it.  I have also been to Granada, where I spent the day with my family in a tourist zone where small boat captains were haggling over who would take us on a tour; we ended up parking a few hundred yards down from them and passing the afternoon sitting around admiring the lake.  I have also visited Massaya and Matagalpa city, two department capitals.  Matagalpa is a compact city that is inside a small valley, the Massaya is a little larger and in a plain, so it stretches out.  We also had some sessions in the visitors center of a National Park, and were able to explore the park after.  The top of the volcano is windswept grassland, the product of smoke causing acid rain.  Some of us went to see lava tube caves, where large taproots hang suspended from the roof in search of water and bats fly close enough to hear their flapping. 

Overall, I am learning a lot, but feel like my expertise in what I am doing is just scratching the surface.  There are so many examples of volunteers doing great projects which harness the energy of communities to change them for the better that I am a bit intimidated.  I am sure I will be able to find my place in Peace Corps, but right now I know that taking my service day by day will really help my sanity, and keep me focused on building stronger communities.